Returning Home From War (Tigray I 2023)

A week before Kibrom Berhane will climb the hill to his village in northern Ethiopia and embrace his mother — before he will tell her that the war is over now, that everything will finally be alright — he stands in a small room on the outskirts of the city of Mekele, trying to keep his balance.

He looks into a mirror. A young man with a shy gaze, 24 years old, almost two meters tall, with short black curls. He wears a torn military jacket, a basketball shirt underneath.With both hands, he grips a metal frame. Just a few minutes ago, a doctor fitted a handmade prosthesis to his leg. Like a marionette, he rocks back and forth, slowly shifting his weight. He wobbles, tenses his muscles to keep from falling. Then, carefully, he lets go of the frame and stands still. He smiles. For a moment, he seems again like the young man he once was — as if the past months, the war, the suffering, and the killing had never happened.

The war in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region was one of the bloodiest conflicts in recent history. Estimates suggest that up to 600,000 people were killed. For two years, the Ethiopian army under Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed fought against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), the political party of the eponymous federal state. At its core, the war was a power struggle between federalism and centralism. Yet despite its enormous brutality, the conflict remained largely unnoticed by the international public. This was partly because the Ethiopian government cut off internet and telephone connections to the region, preventing news from reaching the outside world. In November 2022, the warring parties signed a peace agreement.

(Text Julian Busch)